Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/270

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And I know that this passes:

This implacable fury and torment of men,

As a thing insensate and vain:

And the stillness hath said unto me,

Over the tumult of sounds and shaken flame,

Out of the terrible beauty of wrath,

I alone am eternal.

One bough of clear promise

Across the moon.

Frederic Manning

NDLESS lanes sunken in the clay,

Bays, and traverses, fringed with wasted herbage,

Seed-pods of blue scabious, and some lingering blooms;

And the sky, seen as from a well,

Brilliant with frosty stars.

We stumble, cursing, on the slippery duck-boards.

Goaded like the damned by some invisible wrath,

A will stronger than weariness, stronger than animal fear,

Implacable and monotonous.

Here a shaft, slanting, and below

A dusty and flickering light from one feeble candle

And prone figures sleeping uneasily,

Murmuring,

And men who cannot sleep,

With faces impassive as masks,

Bright, feverish eyes, and drawn lips,

Sad, pitiless, terrible faces,

Each an incarnate curse.

Here in a bay, a helmeted sentry

Silent and motionless, watching while two sleep,

And he sees before him

With indifferent eyes the blasted and torn land

Peopled with stiff prone forms, stupidly rigid,

As tho' they had not been men.